1. Field of the Invention
The present invention generally relates to the IBM® WebSphere® Portal and, specifically, the present invention provides a system and method for controlling (e.g., starting and stopping) the IBM WebSphere Portal (WP) without the requirement of having knowledge of the administrator credential ID and password (PW).
2. Related Art
WebSphere refers to a brand of IBM software products which helped define the middleware software category and is designed to set up, operate and integrate e-business applications across multiple computing platforms using Web technologies. It includes both the run-time components (like WebSphere Application Server (WAS)) and the tools to develop applications that will run on WAS. The IBM WebSphere Portal provides personalized access to a variety of applications and aggregate disparate content sources and services. Portals allow people to customize their user experience, with personalized applications based on role, context, actions, location, preferences and team collaboration needs. There are many other things that can be brought into a portal site. Web portals allow partners, employees and customers to choose their user experience, with personalized applications based on role, context, actions, location, preferences and team collaboration needs. IBM WebSphere Portal software provides a composite application or business mashup framework and the advanced tooling needed to build flexible, SOA-based solutions, as well as the unmatched scalability required by any size organization.
There are some known ways to start and stop WebSphere Portal (WP). For instance:                1. via commands on the Command Line Interface (CLI) on a session shell;        2. on the administrator console (admin console) via a web browser; and        3. with a WP configuration task.        
For more information, see http://publib.boulder.ibm.com/infocenter/wpdoc/v6r0/index.jsp?topic=/com.ibm.wp.ent.d oc/wpf/inst_startstop.html.
Each of these require knowledge of the administrator credential identification (ID) and password. This requirement is necessary in the prior art as the ability to start and stop the WP needs to be secure, that is, only authorized persons are allowed to start and stop the WP. However, this is a problem if the administrator credential ID and password are not known to the person with operator role wishing to start or stop the WP.
Existing portals have an existing interface which is configured to respond to only one user ID (and password) to control the portal, i.e., start and stop the portal. In this way, controlling the portal is secure. However, as discussed above, it is very limited in its usage due to the above requirements. If the person who owns those credentials is not available, there is no way for another person not having those credentials to start and stop WP. These tasks are very critical during deployment and maintenance windows. Additionally, if those credentials get stolen or lost, the whole production environment becomes vulnerable and is exposed to a great risk of security attacks. In addition, it can cause delays in that maintenance or deployment procedures may not be able to be performed in a timely manner causing inefficiencies.
As such, a new secure system and method are necessary to allow a person to start and stop the WebSphere Portal (WP) without the requirement of having knowledge of the administrator credential ID and password as described above.